Travelog

Tasmania

2005-12-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

Just updating to let people know I'm alive and well, and survived the Tasmanian wilderness. If I was to fall in love with Australia, it would definitely be with Tasmania. This place is insanely gorgeous, nothing like I've ever seen before. We didn't end up doing the entire Overland Track due to logistical constraints, but it was a nice mixture between driving around different parts of Tasmania and backpacking.

It'll be a while...

2005-11-25T14:41:00.000-08:00

I'm off to Tasmania today for the next week, first going to Port Arthur with Daisy, Yasmin, Lyra, and David before backpacking the Overland Track for 5 days with Lyra and David. No worries if I don't contact for a while!

Cairns

2005-11-24T02:36:00.000-08:00

Cairns is fun so far. I've realized a few things I don't like about being a tourist. This town is just crazy with tourism, I bet 90% of the people I've seen on the streets are all foreign of some sort, and everyone is a little ridiculous. I shouldn't be so hard, they're on vacation and want to be a bit crazy. I have definitely realized that touring is way too easy for me, and it bothers me a lot because it feels really excessive. I'm so used to putting up with a lot of crap with every trip (i.e. Mexico (2x), Death Valley, Glasshouse Mountains), or just working hard (i.e. Puerto Rico, Brisbane). This was absolutely luxurious and I don't think I like it.

The one thing that is thwarting me right now is maybe strep throat (thanks to Ann and Alex). The good thing was that it only affected my throat (it hurts to swallow and yawn) and left my sinus system decongested for diving.

I arrived on Tuesday and walked all across the lagoon and stopped to take a couple of naps on the grass. The lagoon is ugly, tons of silt is suspended and completely clouds the water, plus the danger of crocodiles made me stay far from the edge. On either end are beautiful mangrove forests, some Avicennia sp., and for the first time I can see why some botanists are tempted to call it a rainforest. Again, I stayed far away from the edge for fear of crocodiles. I pretty much passed out afterward.

The next day I pulled together all my shit and went on a liveaboard dive trip, overnighting on the reef with 5 day dives and 1 night dive, accomodation and food included. The GBR was of course gorgeous and wonderful, the only problem being that I was completely spoiled by Heron Island. Everyone I partnered with were stoked to see green turtles and black tip and white tip reef sharks, but I was quite bored with them and looked for other cool organisms. I have to admit, I always have an eye out for nudibranchs, just because they're absolutely gorgeous. I did see several giant Giant Clams, probably 1.5m across. Tridacna gigas is what I'm guessing. We only saw Tridacna maxima at Heron Island.

Frankie the Maori Wrasse came up to us on today's dive! So incredibly friendly, he kept bumping up to us begging to be petted. I rubbed my hand on his forehead hump and it was surprisingly soft! We started swimming circles around each other just for fun.

I saw a slipper lobster, quite a few nudibranchs, sea whips (not present at Heron Island), a trevally (it was fun during the night dive because if you shined the light on a small fish, this 1m trevally would immediately eat it, it was called 'buddy kill'), some other beautiful fish, a number of green turtles, whaler sharks...yah. It was exciting. AND I finally started paying attention to navigation, I could actually lead groups of people around! Yah, I was definitely the most advanced and comfortable diver in the group and there was no divemaster, so everyone followed me.

I wouldn't particularly recommend the tour I did, although it is by far the cheapest one around with a luxurious common room and food. The people were pretty clueless about the reef organisms (except one cool ex-research diver), not very eco-friendly (they threw chunks of BREAD at fish...you think they're equipped to eat that shit? and they didn't even give a briefing on preserving the reef and all the current threats, including physical damage from snorkellers and divers!). They did have that information, if you went back to Cairns and payed a whopping $15 for a 2 hr lesson.

I did meet some interesting people, a pome, an Arizonan, a Japanese, and tons of swedes. I'm going out with them tonight but I'm utterly exhausted, we'll see how long I last. Yup, Cairns is definitely the most touristy I've ever been in my entire life (well, independently, Kroombit was pretty bad but at least I had interesting friends to distract myself with) with booking actual tours. It's been fun, but I really can't wait to be completely autonomous again in Tasmania.

I can't believe I'm going home so soon! How sad! I absolutely love Australia, I'm not quite ready to leave. It struck me that it's only in 2 weeks that I'm back in the states. Damn. It'll be pleasant to go back home, but I wouldn't mind sticking here for a while longer.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!

Tweed Valley

2005-11-21T03:59:00.000-08:00

The last night the group was together, we ended up going out to the Port Office, a club downtown. Unfortunately I was utterly exhausted and pretty cranky, but I felt obliged because it was the last time. I woke up insanely early and got packed, ran few errands, had breakfast with Lindsay, Phil, Allison, Cristal, and Amelia, then met up with Lyra to catch the coach to Muwillumbah.

Tweed Valley lies at the foot of Mount Warning in the volcanic caldera on the New South Wales side. It used to be a massive stretch of subtropical rainforest called The Big Scrub, almost all of which has been completely decimated by agriculture and ranches because of the rich basalt soils. Murwillumbah is the biggest town in Tweed Valley, as far as I know. It's a really cute countryside with a ton of farms and tons of fruit stands. I say this as I am currently munching down on the most delicious organic mango I've ever had. I came here because Rob, our tutor from Lamington, left an open invitation for a 'rainforest experience.' How could I resist?

Rob and his mother picked us up from the train station and drove us back to their home which is actually located in Crystal Creek, 15km out of Murwillumbah. Their house is absolutely gorgeous, a large wooden veranda with a comfy couch and table set, overlooking a couple rolling hills of grass and a few native and exotic trees. Rob is this crazy botanist nerd whose goal is to restore his mother's property and the adjacent creek to native rainforest flora. Rob and his mother just moved in a few months ago, so the property is in its early restoration phase, but it's still very beautiful. There were just so many birds, insects, a few wallabies. Oh! The first night we were there we made a small fire outside (fire to kill the grass and leave space for rainforest plants, and something cozy to sit by) and a tawny frogmouth (owl-like bird) few right above us and landed on a eucalypt right in front of us. It was quite funny to watch Rob interact with his mother, a loving but nagging relationship on both their parts.

The next day we went exploring on the property, going down a few creeks, swam in this huge water hole, picked up a bunch of fruit along the stands, and met his friends Irwin and Adrienne, an environmental architect and an artist, respectively. Their son is Rob's best friend Louis, the complete complement because of their obsession for identifying plant species and their mission to create an interactive rainforest species cd-rom. Irwin gave us a big schpeel about his travels, how he's saving the world, and how humanity should save the world. Oh, and on the drive we saw a very large carpet python hanging out on the rocks next to the freeway. We also saw the "uncommon" regent mudskipper butterfly, but we ended up seeing 2 more the following day so I think that's sort of a wrong description. It's a really cool insect though, the missing link between a moth and a butterfly. Males would be considered butterflies but females moths...or vice versa.

The next day we drove up to the Nightcap Range, one of the volcanic ridges, and met Louis. Let me tell you...hours of driving and stopping every few feet to discuss this or that plant...interesting but after 3 hours really tiring. It was quite cute watching Rob and Louis crouching down at plant after plant, chatting merrily away and taking pictures. Finally we went to a waterfall outlook and met two more of Rob's acquaintances, crazy sarcastic hippy-esque guys with whom I had a lot of fun joking with. We dropped into more of Rob's friends home, a house full of the ultimate hippies with a 6-month old baby. They were so sweet and you just had to admire how happy and excited they seemed. Joey and Joselyn with their baby met us up at the campsite later in the night and we had a good chat around the fire. Lyra and I fell asleep around the fire, but I didn't sleep very well because although there were no mosquitos, I could swear something was biting me. I started to realize I was peeling small leeches of my face. I tried to ignore them but they were incredibly persistent, so I sat up. Immediately I felt something large and squishy on my stomach and I pulled out a 2 inch very fat leech from under my shirt. I got grossed out and woke up Lyra, who immediately jumped out and wiped all the leeches off herself. I took off my shirt to check myself and I realized the back of it was completely wet. Turns out that fat leech had already drunk my blood on the back of my neck and because of their anticoagulates, I was bleeding profusely down my neck. Needless to say, I opted to sleep in the car.

We got up, said goodbye to Joe and Joselyn, and went to Hastings Beach to check out the tidepools. It was really gorgeous, with clear waters and beautiful breaks. Unfortunately it was really windy (therefore dangerous waves) and a high tide, so we just admired the view. Afterward, we had to drop Lyra off at the Coolangatta Airport (she's going to the Blue Mountains to do some rockclimbing before meeting up with me in Tasmania) and we returned to Rob's home. A few hours later they dropped me off at Murwillumbah to catch the bus back to Brisbane, where I'm back with my homestay family for the night. I leave for Cairns tomorrow morning.

I really admire all the people I met. For once I met some environmentalists with a scientific approach, something I can relate to much more. It made me think a lot about how I used to be when I first entered college, inspired and eager to save the world. I got severely disillusioned because of the mentality of some that I met, and then I got very busy with my own issues. There's just something so peaceful yet outraged in all of them, it's such a bizarre dichotomy. Rob went on many rants, but he is the most laidback person I've ever met. I did spend most of time listening to different species of plants and about what's wrong with the world and the states. Though for some reason it didn't bother me. Maybe I've gotten out of my selfish rut finally? Although I obviously didn't fit very well into their life, we still got along quite well and something about the whole trip was very noble without being moral.

Anyway, I'm off to Cairns tomorrow! It might be another few days before I'll get a chance to use the internet.

Goodbye Brisbane

2005-11-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

My last final, our farewell lunch...there's nothing left. Oh so sad...

Leaving yet another community to start another set of adventures. It's always a bit rough to say goodbye.

Reflection

2005-11-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

I turned in my two papers yesterday, took my Human and Terrestrial Ecology final this morning (and somehow was able to put down the right answers...even though I had no idea). I only have marine biology to study for, but I'm having a hard time getting myself motivated. 85% of the course is done, and I almost feel like I'm done. I ditched seeing a movie so that I could plan my Cairns trip, but now that that's done, I want to take some more time off before I go into study-mode again. Since I can't really do anything, I'm just updating my blog.

I really enjoyed this program. I initially had my doubts because there wasn't a lot of room for independence, I'd be stuck with the same people for 3 months, and we were herded like cattle from field trip to field trip, but it actually turned out to be one of best experiences I could have hoped for. They say studying abroad changes you and I believe it. It's going to be sad to part ways this Thursday. It was a relatively good group, and I have the feeling that I'm going to lose touch with most of them. Every time I meet someone cool, I have a hard time with the idea that now they're going to be out of my life forever, but I'm also not one to be able to keep up with everyone. I also think that I'm just so frantically busy with travelling all the time and meeting a ton of people, it's hard to actually think about it too much.

I'm also glad I chose this program instead of a normal semester program. I got close to many people, I travelled a hell of a lot, got to know the professors, and learned so much about the biology and ecology of Australia. I don't think undergraduate studying and travelling goes well together for me. I'd be itching to travel a lot and blow off school since I would be a foreign country, but I know I would be studying like crazy because I'm so worried about my grades. This program was a nice melding of the two. If I'm going to have to take a course abroad, at least the structure was like so. Honestly, I really don't care too much that I didn't meet many Australians.

I have to admit that all-in-all I was not impressed with Brisbane. It's probably because every time I'm in Brisbane I'm always either at home or on campus and I don't explore anything. But the bus system and time constraints makes it difficult to experience a normal life here. I don't think I'll ever come back to Brisbane, there just isn't anything in particular that I would come back here for. It feels like a normal city, maybe even more like a bunch of suburbs crammed together.

I think I've finally acclimated to this transient lifestyle. At first I got homesick in Puerto Rico and a little bit in Australia, I got tired of being shuffled around like and not having a daily life...but now I'm really enjoying it. To take crazy trips every other week, to come back and study and learn. And I actually LIKE reading papers.

Ok...this is weird. I didn't even know the 4th movie of Harry Potter was even coming out! How out of touch am I? I have not paid attention to anything at all since I've been travelling. Wow...

The Profs

2005-11-10T04:02:00.000-08:00

The two professors on this trip are very cool, and really get to know you personally. Prof Ian Tibbetts is possibly the funniest man alive, but carries the normal professor aura where you admire them from a distance, but definitely don't regard as an equal. He's got a family and so many other obligations, it's just a typical class. Prof. Mike is definitely interesting. This trip made me realize what a complicated guy he's turning out to be. He tells us all these anecdotes about himself, he discusses life with us, he's an insomniac, and during the entire trip of Kroombit I didn't see him without a glass of red wine (not that I blame him in particular). He's traveled all around the world. He's just such a puzzle. On the one hand, he seems like a kiwi hick shooting rifles, on the other he's an academic, on the other he's a big geek with his 80s swim trunks and red fro, on another he's a charming sophisticate who knows his wines and has infamous friends, and on another he's a radical outraged liberal. It works together, but it doesn't stop me from being surprised all the time.

Kroombit

2005-11-10T02:59:00.000-08:00

This was definitely an interesting trip. Not my favorite, but definitely with many insights to the outback and some interesting stories.

Kroombit is a cattle ranch/tourist hostel.

First of all, I have not been so abused in my entire LIFE. In a space of 5 days (and 2 were all traveling), I managed to get a sizeable bruise on my chin, lacerated my legs up quite a bit, and scraped my back and hip on the 4WD doors. I have a bruise on my inner right thigh from mechanical bull riding, a rash from some evil plant, and a deep infected hole in my left shin from a cruel twig. Second of all, I have not been so testosterone-soaked in my life. I could not believe how...rugged...the owners were.

The first day we arrived, we just played a bunch of random games that the ranch organized. We rode the mechanical bull (which I sucked at by the way), then just wandered around the place looking at the stars. Poor Megan got a fencing wire stuck through her big toe =(. The next day we went out for a "bit of a wanda" and that took us to a few places in a 4WD, stopping occasionally for lectures from a cattle-rancher's view (Andrew, the owner's son-in-law) and Prof Mike's view, and finally we stopped at this one creek and walked for maybe 5 hours up it. There is no trail, and you had to fight like a madwoman to get through the brush sometimes (hence most of the injuries). At the end, we finally reached the first waterhole and went jumping off the cliff face. Poor Max slipped and tumbled awkwardly down, breaking his right ring finger. The water was absolutely disgusting too, there were clumps of algae floating on the surface and strongly smelled of sulfur, but it was refreshing after such a arduous hike. When we got out, algae and filth coated our skins. Andy's leg and toe hair were clumped with dirt *shudder*. There was one stinging plant whose leaves looked exactly like the innocuous leonas so I kept running into it. It starts off with a little stinging, then it builds up to a really bad burn, then you get a few bubbles on your skin. I had fun, despite the pain, but a lot of the girls complained so much I wanted to strangle them. It's kind of exhilarating to run around in a non-trail. Oh, we did stop at this one place called Marblehead and it had devonian coral fossils! There was a small pond there with thousands and thousands of tadpoles, all cane toads! The boys decided that since they were evil, they felt justified in killing all the baby toads. I dunno, I know they're ecological evil, but I can't bring myself to just smash them. We also saw a beautiful orange snake swimming in the pool. How it managed to survive all those toads is a mystery, unless it just doesn't eat them.

The following morning we went on a 4WD for 12 hours (oh my bum...) and we saw Beautiful Betsy, a bomber plane that mysteriously disappeared in the 1940s and was discovered a little over 10 years ago...and a bunch of different kinds of vegetation. The orb spiders there are absolutely gorgeous. Lots of kangaroos and wallabies. Had some nice lookout points overlooking the gorge, kroombit top, and a waterfall. The following day we went for a horseback ride and it was fun I suppose. A bit boring really, my horse just plodded like no other and I didn't know how to make him perk up a bit. I did start to learn how to not have him run me into trees. Conrad had gone the day before, and apparently he had had a bunch of lessons when he was young but hadn't gone in a while. He hung towards the back and tried to canter, but lost control of the horse and had it run him straight into a waist-high branch. The horse went skidaddle and he just hung on the branch until someone could help him.

We went camping the following night and Prof. Mike brought a star chart! The overlapping constellations would be taurus, orion (upside-down), the seven sisters...and a few other astrological ones. As much fun as I've had on this trip, I'm definitely glad it's over in a week. I was so irritated by so many people that night. Girl Alex and Megan were drunk and kept me awake by screeching, and at 1:30am David accidentally stepped on Andy, Andy freaked, and somehow a shoe hit me in the mouth. We woke up early for a goat rodeo, which horrified me hoenstly, and at the end I was just tired of everything. I like the country, I liked hiking and camping out under the stars, but it was just too much. It's amazing how many people were such brats.

I am getting along really well with Lyra and Ann, both very easy-going outdoorsy girls. I'm excited in spring when I get back to the states. Both Lyra and I were reminiscing about the violin, and we decided that when we got back we would camp out at Joshua Tree and do a little fiddling.

I also can't wait for just traveling by myself.

But it's been a good week for sure. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I was just a little bitchy is all.

So I have two papers and two finals, and I have to work out the details of my travel plans. I am absolutely swamped, this is my only break. Streeesssssssss.

Phew...

2005-11-03T01:37:00.000-08:00

I am stressed, definitely and infinitely stressed. I have 3 papers due! THREE! And I'm not even halfway done with ONE. And I'm leaving for Kroombit Sunday morning, returning to Brisbane on Thursday, then finals the following Tuesday. I thought I had really good ideas for this paper, but as it turns out none of it is very exciting or creative and that bothers me. But, it's too late to turn back now. At least I know I'll pull off a decent grade with this paper, enough to get an A in the class.

So yah, things have been so hectic here for so long that I can't seem to find the time to upload pictures or call anyone, so sorry people! I do have something exciting to say though....
I know I said I had my plans all worked out..but I overhauled them again. But, now I'm stuck, I bought plane tickets and everything so nothing can change!
Nov 18-21: Tweed Valley
-exploring rainforests with Lyra a local Aussie (actually he's Canadian but he might as well be Australian)
Nov 22-26: Cairns
-diving
Nov 26-Dec 3: Tasmania
-hiring own car (part of the time with Daisy and Yasmin) and driving around, camping and bushwalking and backpacking
Dec 3-Dec 8: Melbourne
-hang out with Anna and see what I can do
Dec 10: Arrive in SF

I had elaborate plans to include group tours and uluru and the outback...but it got to be much too expensive and this is infinitely cheaper. That and I get to avoid mosquitos.

Heron Island

2005-10-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

It was possibly the most incredible experience of my life. Almost everything I could have possibly wanted to see at the GBR happened in the space of 10 days. This is literally what it was like to be there:
I walk along the beach for 2 minutes and a small green turtle swims by (the water is so clear you can see straight to the bottom).
I say to my friends, "How crazy is it that I just got to the beach and a turtle swims by?"
Then a baby shovelnose ray swims past me.
I say, "Wow, how crazy is it that in the space of two minutes I've seen a turtle and a shovel.."
Then an eagle ray leaps a couple feet out of the water.

The set-up:
Heron Island is very very small, it can take 20-30 minutes to walk around the entire island, and often that's when I saunter. One half is high-paying resort guests, the other half is the Heron Island Research Station. HIRS is only accessible by a tunnel through trees that massive amounts of white-capped noddies (birds) have nests in. And they have an incredible amount of poop. I have dubbed the tunnel shit-hallway because you can't get away. I bought a hat from the reception and as soon as I stepped out, a bird shat on it. We also had a very large group of Australians with their famous coral professor sharing the research station with us.

I can't even begin to recount what I've seen snorkeling and diving. I can give a few favorite anecdotes.
A few people and I were returning from a brief and unsatisfying night snorkel (the damn tutor was more fascinated in swimming through coral spat rather than looking at turtles, woobagongs, and moray eels) and Tim tells us there's rumors of a turtle on the beach. We walk back and sure enough, right before shit hallway is a large green body-pitting. Unfortunately for us, we missed the egg laying event (we heard it, but didn't see it). But the researcher who has been keeping tabs on Heron Island turtles since 1984 came by and said there were 4 other turtles on the beach ready to lay eggs. We followed her to one other green turtle and waited patiently in the dark for a good hour or so, listening to her body-pit and egg-chamber. Lyra and I slowly crawled up the dune towards the female (turtles are easily disturbed by light and movement when body-pitting and egg-chambering, but go into a trance during egg-laying so we can turn on a light and watch her lay eggs). We hear her throwing sand and sighing from the effort. Suddenly I hear a splat and Lyra says, "Ew!" A bird managed to target her in the dark! Finally the turtle gets to laying eggs and the researcher returns and places a flashlight right above the egg-chamber and we watch as she lays a 100 or so eggs. So amazing.

Lyra, David, Conrad and I went out the next day to illegally night snorkel on our own and we saw moray eels, a huge woobagong, a loggerhead turtle, and 3 greens. One of the greens came straight up to Lyra, and another we saw was missing a back flipper. She went up to the surface to breathe and fell awkwardly down because she couldn't support herself.

On the other side of the island there were tons of black-tip reef sharks, shovelnose rays, stingrays, and a billion other types. We were literally running into groups of 10 every time we moved. There were also quite a bit of white-tip reef sharks.

A funny story but one that I didn't see:
Mike was diving with Ann and she pointed out a turtle to him. He swam over to the turtle to take a picture, trailing behind it, when it suddenly U-turned and went to face him. He just stopped and assumed the turtle would eventually turn away from him, but it kept getting closer and closer until it was literally 6" away from his face. He panicked and tried to back up, but the turtle kept coming closer, entranced by the charm of Mike and obviously hormonally driven. The divemaster could not stop laughing.

Favourite Moment:
I saw stonefish! I was snorkeling with Michelle at Blue Pools and Daisy pointed out a very light-coloured stonefish. I was excited because I have a dangerous fascination with venomous creatures. Michelle, the crazy touch-everything girl she is, waved her hand above it to get it irritated, and it flashed us bright orange and yellow with its pectoral fins before swimming off!! How crazy is that? Big aposomatic colouration example. I didn't even know they looked like that. Of course I sort of screeched and moved backwards when that happened, but it was definitely worth it to see.

I also saw a 3m long moray eel, a common reef octopus, beautiful fish, beautiful coral, Gus (a 6ft large cod), etc. Gus is really cool, he always hangs out at the harbour so it's easy to just snorkel and see him. I was afraid of getting too close to him because apparently in another cod elsewhere, they've found a human head O_O. I'm afraid to think what adorable Gus capable of.

I've thought about it, and it's really gross to be in the water with coral spat. It smells very fishy, it makes disgusting sticky clumps on the surface, and I refuse to open my mouth or flood my snorkel with nasty water.

We had a couple projects: one was looking at animal behaviour of different phylums to see how they reacted to repeated disturbance. We timed from the when we scared them to when they came back out. It could have been random, constant (automated response), decreasing (learning), increasing (scared shitless), and I had fun harassing Giant Clams, Shrimp Gobies, Hermit Crabs, and Christmas-Tree Worms. Looks like clams are learning, worms are automated, hermit crabs inconclusive, and gobies completely random (too sophisticated to be able to respond decently to our project). Then we had to come up with our own research proposals and learning about giant clams was really fascinating because of all their eyes on their mantle, and how they use it as burgler alarms. Then I read that their eyes are really sophisticated as pinhole eyes go (image-forming), but a suggestion was put in that adaptation prevented them from evolving better resolving eyes because then they would see more and react too much. I also read that they don't respond to increasing illumination, only decreasing. So that made me think about the evolution of optical systems as burgler alarms. So now I just have to find a few model species and figure out how to test it =P.

So basically, Heron Island is everything I expected to be doing in Australia. I'm sad my program is ending, but there is much for me to travel. I've finally figured out my plans, I just need concrete dates now.
Nov 18th-? Maybe go to Tweed Valley with Lyra and stay at Rob's place, do some hiking and maybe backpacking
After take a train from Brisbane to Cairns, stopping along the way to go to Whitsunday Islands. Then go to Cairns and dive my heart out. Ship all heavy gear home from Cairns and take a plane down to Melbourne to hang out with Anna.

Brief Note

2005-10-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

Before I forget, I just got dropped off home by the taxi and the driver is going to Antarctica too on January 2nd! Craaaazy!! He told me that once the waves were 20m high O_O

Anyway, no energy to update about Heron Island. Later though. It's just that it's 1:30am here =P

Spider Update

2005-10-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I was wrong again, definitely a huntsman spider. So I finally got the galls to grab it (aka I thought of the brilliant idea of capturing it with a larger container) and I set it outside. Little did I realize I resigned it to a slow and painful death =(
I didn't know that the house was sprayed. I came onto the porch this morning to find it looking like a pathetic crumpled ball.

It really was pretty.

Bloody Animals

2005-10-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

I'm afeared of my room because there's a bloody huge spider (3 inches) perched at the foot of my bed. And yes, I've been reading too much colonial history books.

I think it's a huntsmen spider...non-venomous and non-aggressive....but it's huge and scary!!! I like spiders, I really do, but when I know what they're capable of, and the fact that this is Australia does not decrease my fears of dying a quick and sudden death. And not on my bed when I need to go to sleep! I need to get the nerve to catch it in a jar...or sleep on the couch tonight. I'm just worried that I might not know where it is later on.

And I gave a little screech when a 3 inch moth flew into my face. I know they're not harmful, but it certainly is a surprise.

Edit: Okay fuck, I've been staring at it for a good 20 minutes, jar and magazine in hand, and I realized it's not a huntsman, it's a wolf spider. Venomous and non-aggressive, but at least not in the deadly category. *whine* I am sleeping on the couch tonight.

First Brisbane Glimpse

2005-10-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to the museum! It was an absolutely miserable day, cold and wet, so I had to do something indoors. I caught the bus to the cultural centre and proceeded to explore. First of all, the only interesting things of all offered was the museum (free!) and the art museum.

Queensland Museum is exactly as everyone had described it, absolutely and utterly random. At the very least, each room had a theme, but even that sometimes was questionable. I did really love the museum, a mixture of natural history and post-colonial history. I saw a fossil reconstruction of a diprotodon, "a large wombat" as everyone has described it. Holy shit it's huge!! 10ft across, I swear, and it's a large fuzzy creature?! Definitely in the top 10 extinct animals I would like to meet. What I really enjoyed was the breakdown of the national anthem "Waltzing Matilda." It's about a wanderer (closer to a homeless man) who steals a sheep, gets caught, then drowns trying to get away. Australians love their losers.

The art museum was fantastic, half devoted to modern Aboriginal art, both traditional and modern styles. There was a downstairs exhibit dedicated to the performing arts, most of it very weird. One video was in an enclosed room with a sign saying children shouldn't watch. I decided to peek and it was a woman listening to a self-guided audio tour about to make love to a marble pillar in the middle of a museum. I don't know what to say. Another was fortunately PG, and hysterical. A small japanese man painted himself bright yellow and carried a heart (pig's?) around downtown Brisbane. It was just the way he carried himself, stoic and meek, as if trying not to draw attention to himself but painted like a bloody banana.

I forgot to mention from the Gold Coast trip. On the field trip on the boat, we saw humpback dolphins (uncommon) and dugongs!!!!! OHMYGOSHSOCOOL!! *gush*

I was flipping through my photos and recollections (I would upload them but damn snapfish keeps crashing) and it's amazing how out of the entire weekend, I would mention and have millions of pictures of each interesting plant and animal in tedious detail, but gloss over everything else. Out of all the pictures from this weekend, I have maybe 3 pictures of people, and everything else of the boat trip, pictures of how ugly coolangatta was, and half from the micro national park I visited. Oh what a nerd I am.

The Gold Coast

2005-10-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

The Gold Coast is an hour or so south of Brisbane. It was...fun. I say that with hesitation because I did have fun, but I got bored in two days and came home.

The class took a field trip with Prof. Ian to look at natural and industrial sand bars. It was absolutely gorgeous to be on a boat threading between all these small sand islands, some with a meager amount of mangroves, some with the remains of casuarina trees who had the unfortunate luck of attempting to survive on an ever-shifting and hostile land. The bay eventually spit us out back into the ocean and docked at surfer's paradise.

The wonderful thing is that people separated into random groups when we got there. Granted, half of us stayed in the same hotel, but we really did end up doing our own thing. I went to the beach and yes, I can see why surfer's would love it. The energy of the waves were craaazy! I tried body surfing and I not only succeeded every time, I was often flung onto shore when I didn't plan on it. After the 100th time of being tossed around like a rag doll, I decided that the spa at the hostel sounded nice.

I tried to appreciate the Gold Coast for what it was, a horrendously touristy place that I would generally avoid like the plague, but submitted to because the opportunity presented itself. I did go to the hostel bar and I actually had a blast =D. I have to admit, it was the tequila. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about that night was that I left with $40, and I returned with $38.50. For some reason, I kept on getting free drinks. And no, I did not exploit desperate men. There was a wet t-shirt contest that a few friends entered and they won a $100 bar tab. And the bars gave us free shots and free drinks every once in a while. I'm not sure why.

Lindsay, Phil, Dara, Cristal, Allison, and I went down to Coolangatta (where apparently Kelly Slater said his favorite break is at Point Kirra) but honestly, nothing there. We had also mistaken Tweed Head for Tweed Valley, where the valley is a beautiful rainforest beneath Mt. Warning and Tweed Head is an ugly boring coast town. I did manage to obtain a used book I had my eye on for a while, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz. If you like Bill Bryson, you'll like this one. Cpt. Cook btw is the first recorded european to land in Australia at Sydney.

I took a lot of pictures just to show how ugly the town of Coolangatta was. I had so looked forward to hiking, so I went back up to Burleigh Heads (by myself) to go the national park where they said were basalt hexagonal columns. In my head I imagined another Devil's Postpile (near Mammoth). Instead, they were fragmented and highly dispersed. I had to hike with all my travel shit 1km on ugly highway to finally reach the visitor center, a small blue hut only conspicuous because of the small parking lot in front. The old ladies there were sooooo sweet and cute, they filled my water bottle, discussed my travel plans, and stored my gear. The "park" is 1.5km in length, and probably half that in width. I did the entire walk in an hour, and it took that long because I stopped a lot to experiment with my camera. It's so wonderful to be by yourself. I took so many pictures of flowers, insects, and lizards that, if accompanied, would normally only be pointed out casually. I saw a peculiar moth with wings that had the second pair perpendicular to the main wings. I saw a lizard catch and consume a fly, and honestly moved like claymation. Burleigh Heads, in my travel book, said it contained a small but shy population of koalas. The lady at the desk said because of the human and dog traffic, they are long gone. Honestly, I didn't have any expectations for this park, so I really did enjoy it. I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but it was a refreshing little stop. It's something I would enjoy living by, to go to whenever I felt like some quiet.

I did run into the guy who thought we were canadian at the bus stop. That was a small shocker.

I think it's characteristic of, at least SE Qld, to have very small patches of national park in the most random spots. I can see how they try to preserve diversity of flora, but there's no way fauna larger than a small lizard or rat can live there. Birds don't count because they don't have to walk across roads. Lots of brush turkeys, as usual.

So I gave up and came back to Brisbane. I have not seen this city! I'm determined to at least go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary (literally a 15-20 min walk from my house), Brisbane Forest Park to look for platypuses, and the museum. I hear South Bank is gorgeous. I should go to Chinatown...mmmm food.

Roadtrip

2005-10-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

Thursday we (Thomas, Phil, Lindsay, and Dara) hired a car (named Red Kangaroo) from Redspot and somehow discovered how to drive on the lefthand side. We made our way up to the Glasshouse Mountains and found a nice little campsite right by the river. Little did we know what was in store...

First of all, the river moved at such a sluggish pace that it was a disgusting breeding ground for mosquitos. All night we had to fight them off. I put on all the long-sleeved thermals I had just for a little bit of relief. At around midnight I woke up and was having trouble breathing. I thought I was having a slight panic attack from all the mosquitos so I tried to wake up Lindsay, just to talk so that I could calmly get over this attack. The next thing I knew I was on the ground shivering violently. I freaked and woke up everyone and told them I had just fainted and convulsed. Then apparently (I don't remember), I kept on swearing and saying I needed to talk to Lindsay. Phil and Thomas carried me to the car, but I passed out again on the way and fell down. I came to and threw up multiple times (out of the car thankfully). I got these horrible cramps and told them I wanted to take a shower. The pain started to abate and we concluded it was only dehydration, so I drank as much as water as I could possibly down. Lindsay and Thomas drove me to the nearest caravan campsite where I took a shower. Kind of stupid because I took a hot shower, so of course when I got out I said, "Lindsay, I think I'm blacking out." It was very difficult to get dressed, but for the sake of dignity I managed. I opened the door and promptly passed out. Lindsay freaked out and ran back to get Thomas and some water. I remember waking up slowly. I heard this scraping (the bench I was leaning on) and all was black. It was such a surreal feeling, to actually sense something but not have the capabilities to process it. Then I woke up really confused, not having a clue where I was. I was alright, so we drove back to the campsite (much to the relief of Dara and Phil) and I slept the rest of the night in the car with a large jug of water at my side.

I wasn't more dehydrated than usual, so I think it was the combination of losing a lot of blood to the mosquitos, a panic attack from all the mosquitos, the allergic reaction to all the bites, and my sweating from wearing warm clothing on a hot night. Definitely frightening. But now I know, to always carry a mosquito net, and to just let them eat me alive rather than hide.

The following day we went to Mt. Beerwah, the largest volcanic plug. The Glasshouse mountains actually have a number of volcanoes that the Aboriginals named after a family, and Beerwah is the mother. It was a craaazy climb, so I stayed behind because the previous night had freaked us all out. I figured it was a pretty good idea not to extend myself too much. It was like climbing a sheer cliff with no ropes, and at one point Phil had to carry both Dara and Lindsay down. I ended up napping in the sun, reading The Future Eaters, and chatting with a few tourists. The heat was crazy, we had bought a bag of apples and it turned to apple sauce in a few hours. Our soymilk went bad, our bread and paper towels were dried to a crisp, and I had to air out the car for 10 minutes before I could go near it.

We drove to Rainbow Beach, the northern end of the Sunshine Coast, to go camping. We of course stopped at a camping store where we bought mosquito coils and a mosquito net. Not that those were necessary anymore. We camped at M.V. Beagle (okay, but it's the Beagle! Darwin!) and it was so beautiful, but it was so windy and with all the sand...it was not a comfortable night. Of course, in contrast to the previous night, it was heaven. We did manage to set up a tarp between trees with shoelaces and had a little protection. Chef Thomas cooked in the car (not my idea...but nothing happened). The following morning we spent down at the beach playing in the waves. We could see the southern tip of Fraser Island with all these 4WD =P. The waves were crazy! I was knocked down a couple of times and sometimes my back stung from the impact. Definitely a dangerous beach, especially because it was the southern end of a channel where there is a possibility of an undertow, but we only went in waist deep. See, the thing about Australian beaches is this: if there's no one around and you see no one in the water, then there's a good reason why.

We drove through bush country, mostly agriculture, and enjoyed looking at the countryside. We saw a couple kangaroos and once stopped in a eucalyptus forest to look for koalas. Lindsay saw a snake, flipped, and ran to me for protection. Phil and I flipped and ran towards it to find it. Didn't see it..booo. Why is it that people who hate snakes see them and people who love them don't? Of course I walked cautiously (knowing my luck)...but I just wanted to see it *whine*. We made it to Bunya National Park and stopped at this one restaurant/bar/hotel for a few beers and some water. We looked outside and there was a thick acrid smoke covering the evening sky. The people at the bar told us there was a fire and they didn't know where it was, but the rangers were keeping them updated and would tell them where it was heading. All of us nervously look at each other because camping would be risky if we didn't know where the fire was. Then it started raining! The lady at the bar told us the fire was a good 60 miles away and that we could go camping, but with the rain, the girls wanted to just give up and rent a hotel room. We did manage to get a very nice log cabin, and all drank wine. It was pretty fun. Dara's camera is full of egotistical shots of Thomas and his 6-pack, up his nose, and other such things. Phil's video showed his awful bitten feet (3x) and everyone scratching their bites. I passed out at 10, and woke up at 6am. I wandered on a short little path and saw so many wallabies and a very cautious padimelon. The bunya trees, relatives of the hoop pine, are incredible. They've got these crazy leaves that radiate around the stem, and all of them are bunched at the end of the branch. When everyone finally got up, we went on a 10km hike and we had so much fun just staring at the vegetation. But it was really easy hike, and before we realized it, we were back at the parking lot. Since all the other hiking trails were closed due to the fire, we could do nothing but drive through countryside for a good view. It smelled, and sooo many flies, and we nearly ran over a couple of really cool lizards! We saw a huge monitor lizard (3-4ft) sitting on the middle of the road with birds attacking it, and when we all jumped out to get a better look, it crawled up the tree! Then we also nearly hit a bearded dragon which didn't even blink as we approached. Lindsay scared the shit out of us with her screeching brakes and swerving, but the lizard and us survived.

Bush towns are very...boring. Very much like those towns in central CA. At the gas station, Phil forgot that you actually fill up first, and pay after. He had a long confused discussion with the cashier and this large burly guy said to him, "You shouldn't visit this country if you don't understand the culture!" O_o Certainly don't like tourists.

We drove to school today and my gods, how liberating it is to have a car. We were able to stop at Gloria Jeans to have a cuppa and still arrived with 20 minutes to spare. And of course, everyone already knew about my freakout on thursday night. How news travels so fast in our tiny group is mysterious.

We returned the car today and took the train back. Some guy started talking to us and could have sworn we were canadians because our accents weren't strongly american. But then he also thought Dukes of Hazard was the typical American accent.

Now that I'm back, I have to plan for the Gold Coast weekend (another one of those day trips to Seaworld where they leave us there for the weekend) and I have to figure out my traveling schedule for Australia after the program. I have absolutely no idea. I'll probably end up starting up at Cairns and try to go to Daintree/Cape Tribulation for some backpacking, then do a bunch of diving at the GBR, then maybe give Rob a ring for some "rainforest adventures" at Lamington, then drive the Great Pacific Highway down to Sydney or Melbourne, spend some time with Anna, go down to Tasmania for some backpacking (Tasmania is full of red-necks, but also a lot of forests), and finally return to Melbourne to leave for the states. I'm pretty sure that's what I'll end up doing. No Uluru or Kakadu *sigh*. As exciting as Antarctica is, I'm a little sad how truncated my travel plans have become because of training.

Pre-weekend adventure

2005-10-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent all day figuring out a few things, but it's done! We rented a car (I'm nervous about how I'll drive) and we're going to leave this afternoon with 3 national parks in mind: Bunya, Cooloola, and Glasshouse mountains. Coming back Sunday night. And, because we rented a car, we only have 5 people! It's a miracle! Of course I think we got a few people pissed for ditching them, but honestly, there's still a ton of people left and I'm giving them our old plans so they can figure something out.

Yup, this is going to be fun =D

Lamington National Park

2005-10-02T22:54:00.000-07:00

Friday was beautiful, we had just finished all our midterms and projects and hopped on the bus to Lamington National Park with our Prof. Mike. Lamington is an old volcano (I think 50 million years ago, largest volcano on the east coast of Australia, which is not saying much since geologically Australia is dead). We stayed in a local family's resort area (called O'Reilly's) which is on the side of the volcano, surrounded on both sides by deep gorges created by erosion. We unpacked in a beautiful little house: 7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a patio overlooking the gorge. Since we had arrived early, Mike, Di (tutor), and Rob (tutor) took us on a canopy tour. The first tree we stopped at was a strangler fig tree. Strangler figs are sooo cool, they are start growing from the top of a tree and slowly creep their way down the tree to the floor. Then they slowly grow, multiply, and fuse over the tree like a trelass until it suffocates the tree completely. The tree inside then decays away until you have a funky hollow latticed tree.

If any of you have read Bill Bryson, the canopy tour is like the one he described where there were wooden bridges a hundred feet off the ground, and you walked among the secondary canopy. None of that scary ziplining shit I did in Costa Rica. For that I just concentrated on not panicking, rather than looking at all the pretty stuff around me.

That afternoon we went hiking for a few hours looking at the different vegetation types. There's two main classes: sclerophyll forest and rainforest. Turns out, rainforest has nothing to do with rain per se (all of Australia can be very arid), but it depends on fire. Rainforest doesn't burn, and any fire that goes through there kills all the vegetation and opens it up for colonization for more fire-resistant vegetation like sclerophyll. Sclerophyll would be something like eucalyptus and casuarina forests. These species need lots of light to survive, so they require fire to go through to make sure there's nothing more than a meager primary canopy. While we were hiking, we saw the change from sclerophyll to rainforest in literally a couple meters.

Then I went and decided to be stupid and check out if the stinger tree hurts. These are the largest species of stinging nettle in the family, and they can get to a diameter of maybe 15ft or so. Their leaves are covered with all these tiny little spines that feel like fire. I just barely touched it, and my hand itched and burned a bit, but fortunately it went away. I heard of some guy who accidentally fell in it and cried like a baby, then screamed in pain for a month every time water came near him. Not exactly the nicest thing to deal with.

Saturday we had a ridge-hike in the afternoon and it was one of the coolest hikes I've ever done in my entire life. You were literally scrambling over rocks while hiking along a ridge that was no wider than 10-15 feet, with hundreds of meters below you. Mike, the oh-so-morbid guy he is, told us of all these vicious stories of people losing their footing. One guy apparently free fell 100m before the first bounce.

Later that night we went to go see glowworms! I saw a few on the hike down, but the best was this mossy wall with maybe a hundred worms. It looks like LED lights, tiny little blue dots, and sometimes you got disoriented staring at it because it really looks like you're staring at the stars.
Rob told us a funny little story about when he went camping at 1500m altitude with hail and rain. It was absolutely miserable, so they crawled into a little cave but the cave didn't offer much shelter. In the middle of the night, his mate said, "hey, rob, you awake?"
"yah"
"mate, i think there's a little mammal in my swag. it's at my feet"
"what are you going to do about it?"
"nothing. it's warm."
a little while goes by.
"hey rob, you awake?"
"yah"
"it's moved to my crotch"
"what are you going to do about it?"
"nothing, it's warm."
then rob opened up his sleeping bag a little and hoped a small fuzzy creature would join him too.

Sunday we went on an 8 hr hike just to show us the different types of rainforest. There were a series of waterfalls we encountered and at one we could jump into a pool of frigid water. Of course I went, couldn't pass up that sort of opportunity. Phil did a little herbal essence commercial at the actual waterfall. We saw quite a bit of skinks (lizards), some cool vegetation that Rob kept on telling us about (like I retained anything), a diamond-back python, and a ton of padimelons (like smaller wallabies...SO CUTE).

At the peak we saw the cauldera. From there we went our own pace down, and I decided to hang back to get rid of everyone else. I stayed back with Alex (girl), Lyra, Di, Rob, and Mike. Alex is absolutely hysterical. We stopped at a giant stinger tree and Alex said, "let's hurry up and go. i just farted."
So we go along our way and another while passes. Then Mike says, "Alex, did you fart again?"
Alex: "...yeees"
Mike: "well give us a bloody warning, jesus!"
For the rest of the hike she hung out in the back of everyone. We finally get back and go to happy hour, watching to sunset over the ridge (spectacular by the way), and we order a drink called windy road. Mike starts laughing and says, "god that's appropriate." Alex goes back to the house and sort of moans into her pillow that she farted on her professor and how could she ever get a letter of rec. from him.

That night we had a little wine tasting sponsored by Mike (the only good ones were the Cab Sauv and Shiraz), then I went to go look at the stars in the parking lot. Quite a lot of shooting stars.

This morning was uneventful, though we did go to the O'Reilly's place to go wine tasting (A$3 for five wines!!) and surprisingly the white wine was good. I don't like whites generally, but I actually bought some. And, predictably, the red wines weren't so hot. I hear red is best in New South Wales.

Padimelons at first I was very eager to see, like so many of the other elusive Australian fauna, but they are literally EVERYWHERE around the place. I probably saw 10 each day, and from very close. One sort of just chewed a leaf while staring at me for a good few minutes. I also saw a satin bowerbird's bower. Satin Bowerbirds have the most beautiful purple eyes. We also heard the call of the catbird, the lyrebird, the eastern whipbird (which david described as sounding like a laser), and saw some crimson rosellas, king parrots, and many other adorable birds.

wretched joke

2005-09-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

adaptations to dessications

mucuous seals (gastropods - not slimey pinnipeds)

i could not stop laughing for a few minutes

Sunshine Coast addition

2005-09-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

I forgot the coolest part of the zoo! Harriet! She's a galapagos tortoise that DARWIN HIMSELF COLLECTED. Darwin touched her!
*me being a darwin groupie gets flustered*

Sunshine Coast

2005-09-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of time, I have a couple midterms and a project next week, and the day after my project is due I'm off to Lamington National Park.

Friday we went up to the sunshine coast for a day trip to Underwater World in Mooloolaba. The education director was an honor student for our prof. and gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of everything. Turns out they used to have a mola mola! But it got all stressed out and parasitic and so they had to let it go. Poor buddy. So funny, Andy asked and when it turns out they didn't, I swear five separate people patted me on the shoulder in sympathy.

It was soo amazing, as aquariums usually are. I'll have pictures up on snapfish. Hing, the director, gave us a little stingray demonstration where they glided over our hands. And they showed us baby turtles, and this poor turtle who has the floating disease. Apparently it's associated with plastic bags in the gut. The turtle just sort of floats halfway out of the water, more planktonic than pelagic. So sad =(

Then Saturday we took a bus up to Noosa National Park, hiked for a few hours, and hung out around the beach for a bit (I'm starting to get paranoid of the moles on my back...I've been around a lot of sun lately).

Yesterday we went to the Australia Zoo (Anastasia and I wanted to go diving, but it got cancelled! Booooo) but guess who was there? Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. And his wife Terri. They both gave a little bit of a live show. They own the zoo actually. Kind of weird to be able to say that I went to Australia and saw the Croc Hunter. I know, he's kind of annoying and over-the-top, but you have to admire him because all he wants to do is help the animals. If he has to be corny to reach people, so be it.

Oh, and I fell in love with wombats. I knew I liked them before, but I forgot just how cute they were! So big! Just these giant rodent like things that sort of lumber around the yard, and the zookeepers were just picking them up right and left, and they just hung limply in their arms. Sooo cute, must show pictures.

So sad....

2005-09-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

so my project has been looking at noisy miners (birds) in the local area. the first nest i located was in the singular tree that stood in the middle of the bus circle on campus and i observed it for a number of days (looking like a crazy person to the buses driving by), so i'm rather attached to the little group that initially taught me about themselves.

the first day, i heard the immature chirping like crazy, demanding food constantly from the parents and fellow siblings. the second day, it was quite large, flapping its wings about like it's trying to learn how to fly, but still very loud and demanding. the third day, it's completely quiet but the adults seem to keep coming back at the nest, picking at it. i think it's strange but maybe there's a new set of eggs in there. a week passes and i return just to check up for old times sake, and at first i don't see anything. i'm about to go when i see an odd lump on one side of the nest. i pull out my binoculars to take a peek. it's dead! the fledgling is hanging out of the side of the nest! can you believe it? the adults have finally abandoned it, i didn't see a sign of them...it's just so sad when something that occupied the full energies of so many adults is wasted.

Mean Thoughts

2005-09-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

food here is pretty awful. i love the asian foods, they're really good here, but all the normal white australian food is a little to my disliking. not a lot of spices, very meat and potato, and they love salt a bit too much. ah well, what do you expect from a rather more recent spawn of england? at least the coffee's good.

spent another day at home recovering, so i watched city slickers. funniest line i've heard in a long time is when the old cowboy says to billy crystal, "i crap bigger than you."

warning: gossip below

so i figure i better put in some inside gossip of my group (half of whom were sick and infected me). alex and marissa are absolutely hysterical, sometimes i can't breath because i can't stop laughing with them. i shared rooms with them at straddie and i would always go to bed giggling into my pillow and begging them to shut up so i could sleep. they say i'm just easily amused. maybe. daisy is a very very small chinese girl i shared a cab with to my homestay and she is honestly the most adorable person i've ever met. you just have to meet her. max is really funny in a jewish ghetto kind of way, and his obsession with penguins is very endearing. roselyn, however, drives me nuts. tries way too hard in everything. she's desperate for friends, very desperate for guys, and is trying so hard with david that i actually felt sorry for him and tried to extricate him from her arms one night (somewhat unsuccessfully). she also types everything in lecture, even irrelevant things, and it drives me mad to sit near her because all i hear is her typing and not the lecturer. engineer mike (to distinguish him from my prof) is very very nice, the one who's teaching me chinese, but i'm suddenly afraid he's got a thing for me. he's very much like a chinese boy and you just want to adopt him because he's such a kid. i also really enjoy michelle because she's the most down-to-earth honest person i've ever met in my life, and that's what i really respect. once the local straddie kids were harrassing us on their bicycles (doing circles in a buzzard-like fashion) and when one of them rode on her heels, she turned around and kicked the bike (and the kid) to the ground. sounds vicious, but really, the kid deserved it. but i swear, she's got a good heart, and you know because she doesn't hide anything.

it's amazing how first impressions really change too. i thought andy would be an arrogant ass, male-alex annoying, and thomas obnoxious. turns out andy is an arrogant ass but in a way that i can respect, and it's actually quite easy to be friends with him. male-alex is very jewish, and it's a good thing. thomas also hasn't driven me nuts. tim, however, is repulsive. hits on every thing that breathes and has boobs, and thinks the world of himself. the religious twins (pastor-david and conrad) are actually really cool, have good voices, can play the guitar, and are really charming as long as you stay away from the subject of religion.

i'm afraid i have been somewhat inducted in the asian crowd, despite best efforts to avoid them. can't help it, i really enjoy hanging out with alex and marissa and they, despite best efforts, have a harder time avoiding it since yasmin and roselyn are always all over them. yasmin is very sweet, always puts herself out there, always helping me out (when i need a pencil, gum, to borrow money, she's always the first to volunteer)...but she's good friends with roselyn and somehow seems very earnest to have me as a friend. i have a suspicion it's because i'm one of the only asians on this trip who doesn't hang with her posse.

so there's my judgemental self.

Back in Bris-Vegas

2005-09-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

for some reason brisbane is also called bris-vegas. i can only assume it's 'cuz there's a lot of pokies about, but definitely none of the flash and surrealness of vegas.

moreton bay research station (on North Stradbroke Island) was fun, despite inconveniences. Prof. Mike put it as "character-building" sessions. sounds suspiciously like calvin and hobbes. mike is such an odd guy, but he still is hilarious in his own subtle kiwi way. of course the last night we stayed there we went to the local pub, and mike started telling ghost stories of aboriginal men in his bedroom and so on and so forth. but at 4am, these two voices, sounding like wailing children, woke everyone up. fortunately michelle and ann had the balls to investigate and it was two cats. it's not that i believe in ghosts, it's that i don't not believe in them either.

we did end up going to brown lake which doesn't sound appealing, but it was so beautiful. because of all the tannins in the eucalyptus leaves that surround the lake, the lake is literally brown and highly acidic (pH=3), but otherwise completely safe. how many times can i say i swam in a brown lake? it had been so long since i've swam in freshwater so i was a little surprised to find myself sinking. surprisingly it was more clear than the ocean in santa barbara ever was.

we also walked along myora springs and learned about beta-habitats where there was lot of different types of vegetation (rainforest, eucalyptus, casuarina, mangroves) in one area. my feet itched like crazy from the previous day so walking down a cool clear stream felt sooo goood. mangroves just might become one of my favorite types of vegetation, only because they're crazy with their living-on-the-ocean with vertical and prop roots.

we also had this Aboriginal guy (i figured it out! Aboriginal is okay to say/write as long as it's capitalized) teach us how to use boomerangs and it was sooo much fun, i even managed to have it come straight back to where i stood (of course i dove out of the way like the ninny i am). it was pretty hysterical, since it's so difficult to predict where the boomerang will land, and in a crowd of 15 people, we kept on running and diving and ducking for a good hour or so. alex and marissa used me as a shield.

the last thing we did was check out the old graveyard which has burials from 1850 (straddie was a quarantine island) from a typhus outbreak to the present. i'm really not that much of a history person, but for some reason i was really fascinated by everything and i read all the headstones in hopes of figuring out when they died (i like the old ones), what they did for a living, and how they died. they even had a memorial to all the patients who died in the local asylum. while there, michelle and i were attacked by a masked lapwing. i mean, they're flying around us like buzzards screeching very loudly, and next thing you know they dive-bombed us and even scraped michelle's back. those guys are pure evil, they have a thorn-like structure on the forepart of their wing that they attack with.

today i was going to explore brisbane, maybe a museum or a stroll around the river, but i'm sick. last night i ended up shivering so badly despite thermals, socks, gloves, beanie, and 4 blankets, that i had to jump into the shower to keep my teeth from knocking each other out. boooo...and it's such a beautiful day. stuck inside =P and no energy.

have i really mentioned my host family at all? they're south african but moved to the australia about 8 yrs ago. my host mother is nicky, my host sister is 15 yrs old and her name is bronwen, my host brother is 13 yrs old and his name is justin. they're both private school (oh so cute outfits, especially the hats) . their father i'm not sure ever came to australia, but he lives in chile. i'm trying to be polite, so i didn't ask too much more into it. they are very nice, not like so many of my friends who got crazy people needing money.

Back to Moreton Bay Research Station

2005-09-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

Yah, we're back to MBRS but it's for Human and Terrestrial Ecology with Prof. Mike Poole. Can't say I enjoy it as much...we've only been tromping around bush with transect tape, getting eaten alive by mosquitos and I've had quite a few painful ant chomps...and we just look at plants. It's just frustrating because I don't remember much about plants and all the terms, so throwing us in the middle of a swamp and giving us a key that I didn't trust myself with was just a pain in the ass. I guess it's cool, I think I just don't understand anything and don't retain anything so I just feel very frustrated and annoyed.

And I haven't seen anything much cool, except a few spiders, but I wasn't too thrilled to see them because I was constantly walking through their webs and getting them on me. Sorry, it's Australia, I'm actually a bit of a scaredy cat of things because this time I know I'm at-risk for death.

I'm probably also really grumpy because I'm on my period. Hiking in alternately hot and wet weather while being bitten while wondering where and when the next bathroom is while having slight cramps makes Kim very irritable.

Besides the bitchiness that is oozing out of my pores, the other day was awesome because we went to Point Lookout to look for whales and although I didn't see any, we saw turtles! The last time we went the surf was incredible, but this time it was so calm and the water so clear that we could see straight to the bottom. So...turtles! Also a pod of dolphins with a baby dolphin =D.

Last night pastor-David (there's two of them, the other one's just plain ol' David) serenaded everyone with his guitar with Mad World and Fake Plastic Trees and other sentimental sad songs. It's the first time I've ever felt completely comfortable, even surrounded by everyone. I do like most of the people here (can't help but want to strangle a few), but I have felt like I've been treading softly around everyone just because they're strangers. Maybe because we're finally starting to have a normal daily life, slowly coming out of the tourist-everything's-new phase.

Bird Watching

2005-09-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

I don't know if the things I notice in Australia are because I'm suddenly interested in looking at everything, or because it actually is something different. One thing I've been noticing is a lot of reeeeaaaally skinny girls, unhealthy looking. I guess I mentioning this because I just walked out of a bathroom where some girl was throwing up, and when she walked out she did not look healthy. I've heard that you get that a lot on campus at UCSB, but I never really noticed it until now.

On to a lighter subject:
I actually enjoy bird watching. I'm a little bored of the Noisy Miners but I guess that's to be expected after two days of watching them.

The birds here are so beautiful. The other morning I spent the night at my friend's house and when I woke up, there was a couple of kookaburra staring at me through the window. I walked onto the porch and a fleet of rainbow lorikeets flew above me. Honestly, the last time I had breakfast with a bunch of crazy birds was in Costa Rica.
Yesterday I was walking through the park near my home and a fleet of 40 sulfur-crested cockatoos were screaming their little lungs out and flying above me. There are also a ton of purple swamphens running around the grass, and they have a nesting site on a mangrove in the middle of the lake. There's also a mangrove with a nesting site for ibises on the lake on campus, and there were just so many baby ibises and parents sitting on nests...
I just enjoy trying to i.d. all the birds because they're all so crazy looking. My homestay mother gave me a book on Australian Birds and I love it. I wish I could get into naturalist stuff when I'm at home, but for some reason I need something novel to motivate me to look (e.g. flowers in Death Valley, birds in Australia, plants in Costa Rica).

Honestly, I know I've only been in Australia for a little while, I don't have any close friends here, and I'm not very comfortable...but I LOVE it here. For a masters, it doesn't matter where I go, right? I can come here...
I just don't want to leave. I want to live here. I want to wake up in the morning to the obnoxious call of the kookaburra, look out into a subtropical forest in the early morning with a cup of coffee, one girl I met eats breakfast and watches for whales out her kitchen window! She's counted 32 whales this season! Allison and Lyndsay were charged by kangaroos the other day while taking a stroll through a park. How awesome is that??

Diving at Flinders Reef

2005-09-09T20:41:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY went diving in Australia and it was soooooooooooo coooooooool. I saw almost everything I wanted to see in just two dives.

First the bad bits:
Went with a company called Nautilus with 13 people from my class, and really didn't like the company. Rude, overpriced, and disorganized. I'm going to sound spoiled, but I was a bit pissed that they charged us a lot of money for only two dives and two tanks, and then proceeded to tell us to unload and load the cars and the ship. I've honestly never had that before, where when we arrived the people hadn't set up ANYTHING. And honestly, I was, of course, ill to the point of throwing up (this time it was more than dry heaving) and they made me switch my own tank midway. Geeeez..that really helped me. All other professional dive companies I've been with, they look at me and proceed to change the tank for me. I don't know, when I'm diving with a group of friends or a class, I really don't mind helping out at all, but when I pay a professional company, I don't expect to be treated the same way. And they were rude, didn't thank us or anything, made some snide comments, and when I saw a whale they didn't even slow down for anyone to see. Maybe I expect too much, but it annoyed me that they really didn't care if we saw anything or not, they just wanted us in the water and out, and didn't talk to us about what we saw. Also our dive master sort of ditched us.

Also as soon as I surfaced from the first dive, I started wretching. Poor guy next to me panicked and thought I was dying or something.

Finally the good bits:
I SAW A WHALE!!! I was looking out to the horizon to keep from getting sick and I see this giant black thing curve in and out of the water with a small dorsal fin. I started squeaking and male-Alex and Mandy looked with me and the pectoral fin of the whale stuck out. Humpback?

I was listening to the briefing and I saw these brown things floating in the water. As I kept watching and as they got closer, it was HAWKSBILL TURTLES!!!! And on my first dive, I swimming right above a turtle and followed it for a bit. I can't believe it, I finally dove with turtles!!!

I also some small giant clams with brilliantly colored mantles (I waved my hand near them and it retracted), I saw an ugly (but cute) stone-looking angler, a woobagong (sp? a funky shark with frilly flaps of skin around its head), and the corals and the fish were soooo beautiful and varied. I did want to see a grey nurse shark, but didn't find them. Then again, my new mask doesn't fit very well and kept on fogging, so I couldn't see much of anything.

And as I was walking home, I saw a huuuge 1 meter flying fox (a bat) fly right above me.

What I want to see in Australia:
Giant Clam (tick)
Whale (tick)
Grey Nurse Shark
Sea turtles (tick)
Stone Fish
Blue-Ringed Octopus
Blue Bottle (Portuguese Man-of-War) (tick)
Wombat
Koala
Flying Fox (tick)
Box Jellyfish
Sea Snake
Brown Snake
Crown of Thorns

Today is the first time since I left the states that I didn't have any pressing early morning obligations so I slept in until 8:30. Now I'm on campus bird-watching the Noisy Miners and later I'm going to the botanical gardens with Lyndsay. I'm going out tonight, and maybe I'll actually get into it. Tomorrow I have no pressing obligations either so no need to leave tonight early. I do want to rockclimb but I have two papers and a ton of studying to catch up on, so maybe another weekend.

Lectures

2005-09-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Today was a full day of lecture, starting with the Australian lungfish through to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture and finishing with Australian Mammals, Reptiles, and Frogs.

So...confused over whether aboriginal is not a pc-term or what, mainly because people use it all the time and don't think very much about it. And to use the word indigenous also includes the Torres Strait Islanders who live in New Guinea...so just really have no idea.

I feel a bit bad because I REAAAALLY want to see Uluru, but I learned today it's a sacred male site. And I wanted to spend quite a bit of time there, hiking and such...but out of respect I can't go clamboring around it. I hope there's much hiking to do around it at least.

The guy who gave the animal lecture just gave me the classic Aussie understatement of their deadly creatures.
In ref. to pythons:
"Have you ever been in trouble with a python?"
"Oh no, I've got a few small ones wrapped around my arm, and the veins on my hand bulged. Bit annoying because as soon as I would unravel one coil another would form. Of course, if you get it stuck around your neck or encounter a 5-7m one, you're in a bit of a sticky situation."
*nervous laughter from us*
In ref. to venomous snakes:
"Well, yah, we got a lot of the deadliest snakes in the world here, but we don't have any cobras or anything." (what a relief...)

Looking Right

2005-09-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Not only are people driving on the left side, forcing me to always look right when I cross the road, but everyone (when walking) passes on the left. Escalators going up are on the left. Stairways, walkways, bikeways...I'm going to die. I think I will probably end up just walking straight into someone and ultimately suffer a lethal injury to the head. Mostly on streets I look both ways a million times, make sure there are absolutely no cars coming from any direction, then madly dash across. I'm trying so hard to become accustomed to this, but it just leaves me completely confused because part of me is logical and telling me to look this way, and the other part is instinctual and telling me to look the other way. The paralyzed girl on the curbside is me.

I'm reading this book called Claiming a Continent by David Day, about European colonization and taking away the land rights of the Aboriginies. The first successful European colony was in Port Jackson, where Sydney is, and the colony was headed by Captain Phillip. Surprisingly, the colonists were supposed to allow civil indigenous people to retain their land. Unfortunately, they didn't view the aboriginals as civil, and thus evicted them. I get the impression Day is pretty indignant about the whole thing.

My embellished summary of the first 50 pages:
First there were the indigenous people (it's not p.c. to call them aboriginals) who arrived anywhere from 120,000 to 40,000 years ago. Of course, for the rest of the book, I will only cite 120,000 years (despite merely tentative evidence) because that seems to give the impression that the indigenous people have an even greater claim to land ownership, as though 40,000 years vs. a little over 200 isn't enough. Then came the Portuguese. I think. There's a Portuguese map that if you use a method of map making (and of course the method was not used at the time of the map's origin) then sort of snip here, scrunch there, push that back, and extend this...looks remarkably like the Australian north coastline. Plus, someone a hundred years ago cited a shipwreck and cannons that looked Portuguese. Of course, now no one can find it, despite many efforts and millions of dollars, but it really must've been Portuguese. Then those bloody Europeans came and totally mistook the coastline and the indigenous people. The british came to (1) dump convicts (2) set a stronghold in The G reat Southern Continent and (3) have a base for southeast trades. When they came to settle, they started naming landmarks. AND, the bloody wanker, Capt. Phillip didn't even bother to ask the aboriginals what THEY had named those places. After a horrendous start (people starved, died, were slow and stupid and lazy), more shipments of the british came and relations between the indigenous people and the british became very tense. Capt. Phillip wanted to keep these relations amicable and thus decided the best way to show aboriginals that they meant no harm was to kidnap one or so, treat them to a good washing up, and release them so they can tell all their friends and family how great the british were. Too bad the first guy they kidnapped died of smallpox. Then they kidnapped another, who escaped, and later the colonists encountered him in a group. The magnanimous Capt. Phillip got a spear through the shoulder. Shortly thereafter, a couple of convict labourers were murdered and Capt. Phillip gave the order to capture and behead 10 aboriginals (soo not bitter). They found one aboriginal, but he was spared because he was a friend.

Earlier I said I was in blue mountains hiking and such. Sunday it began to rain, we called the rockclimbing place and they said to come on by anyway. Rockclimbing, unfortunately, was out of the question, so that only left the option of abseiling (aka repelling). We (Dara, Auckland Lyndsay, and I) of course said yes, and they gave us curious looks and asked if we had a fever. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN...the only time I've ever been so excited was diving! I am DEFINITELY getting into it. Granted, there was no climbing, only scaling down rocks, but it was such an adrenaline rush. We first scaled down a 15m rock (terrifying, as I had to lower myself 90 degrees), but once I got the hang of it it was very smooth and I got to see the landscape. Later we went to a 30m rock and only the first third had cliff to place my feet, the rest I dangled and I turned around 360 getting a wonderful view. It was misting and raining, so we couldn't see far, but the ambiance was still spectacular. Besides, I had already seen the three sisters from echo point the day before, and it's just a cool looking rock. Watching clouds rush down the mountains was so much cooler. Our guides were these three very hot rugged aussies named Owen, Dave, and Mic...hysterical guys. Dara said, "I don't ask for much, I just want one of them to fall in love with me." We also went with two danish girls who were funny in their own reserved way. The blonde girl, while going down the first one, kept saying "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" and the other girl, whenever asked if ok, stated "NO." I think they had fun though. The last "adventure abseiling" we did was around Boar's Head where we first abseiled a good 20m, traversed around one of the rocks, crawled through a crack only wide enough to fit us, somehow wriggled our way down the ropes to the bottom of the cliff, traversed another rock, and hiked back up the valley. It was just sooooo cooooool...I really want to join the rockclimbing club here. As in, I already emailed the club and am waiting for a response.

The last day in Sydney, the girls went shopping at Bondi Beach, but I stayed behind in Darling Harbor to check out the Maritime Museum. I don't really know what I was expecting, maybe one of the explorers' ship or even better, one of the convict ships. Nope, nothing, nada, the best was this old ship called the James Craig that carried supplies from the Americas to Australia. It was kind of cool, but the emphasis was the labor put into it during restoration and I subsequently got bored. The plane ride on Virgin Airlines back was a little shaky...and I mean I was gripping the armrests and looking very worriedly at my friend. There was a dip in the plane where it free fell for a good few seconds. Note to self: Never take an airline owned by a company that also is a major music distributor and a cell phone service.

It's funny how alive I am in Australia, I keep getting up between the hours of 5:30am and 6:30. I "slept in" today by waking up at 7, and it really doesn't bother me at all.

It's so bizarre how far away I am from things...New Orleans is so completely insane . I'm reading newspapers and listening to the radio, but I feel the half-a-world-away. It's still terrifying, I can't believe something like that could happen to New Orleans. I can understand the natural disaster to some extent, but not at all the way it was handled.

I still haven't felt homesick. It's hitting some people, but I wonder if it's because I've already been-there-done-that in Puerto Rico. And I'm not coming back for an extended period of time until late March-early April, so I better get used to it.

Sydney I

2005-09-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

It was weird when I came back from Moreton Bay to Brisbane. For the entire week I completely forgot I was in Australia. Australian creatures, yes, but completely surrounded by yanks and poms. So driving back into Brisbane was a shock, I thought, oh my god, I'm back in Australia.

My homestay had me watch a reality tv show about Australia's customs officers during dinner. That just sort of tells you the level of danger that is in Australia...shows about somewhat dodgy carry ons and a homeless man from Budapest who was so smelly they turned him back.

We came to Sydney without much incidence. Staying near Kings Cross, kind of the red light district. At least, so people say. I mean, it's a bit dodgy, but it's not anything big. Maybe it's just the fact that Australia has so goddamn little people. I decided to go with the girls (Megan, Allison, Lyndsay, Lyndsay, Dara, Mandy) to the harbor and it was so surreal. See, I have been to Sydney before with my orchestra. We had a competition in the opera house when I was a junior in high school. So I was excited to return and check it out. But it was so frustrating to travel with 6 other girls, especially because I am very determined with what I want to do, and they were really holding me up. Very nice, enjoy them all, but still very frustrated when they would rather talk and take a million pictures of everyone and everything. So I ditched them in North Sydney and took the ferry to Darling Harbor for the aquarium. I decided to wander around the area at first and (1) I recognized the harborside and that my orchestra played in front of the wharf (2) I saw an imax with ALIENS OF THE DEEP IN 3D!! I was soooo excited. I've been dying to see it ever since I heard about it, especially because Childress has a brief moment in it pulling out Riftia (hydrothermal vent tubeworms) from a collecting capsule, and because his grad student is one of the main stars. Childress I've had twice, once for ecological physiology and once for deep sea biology. One of the worser professors I've ever had the curse to encounter, but still it was exciting. I LOOOVE how australia is so delayed in movies, because I get to see the movie in 3D! Ok, it was cheesy and didn't teach me anything about deep sea bio, but think of it as moral support.

I was walking along the wharf and saw hundreds and hundreds of moon jellies drifting right next to the wharf. I walked further behind the wharf to go to Gloria Jean's Coffee (overpriced, only decent coffee, but the Starbucks of Australia) and encountered one of those very large lagoon shaped pools with a bunch of kid water playgrounds. Ok, first, it's blue. I mean, DYED blue. I mean, organisms swimming the water were BLUE, including fish and the bottoms of ducks. Very disturbing.

I did see the aquarium and it was fantastic. They have these two exhibits where you walk in plastic tubes through the tank and it was just so exhilirating. I saw all these crazy VERY large sharks and sting rays just glide above me. I was honestly like a little kid, jumping around like a maniac. Because I was by myself, I think many observers found me very odd. I took the ferry back at night to see the harbor and it was gorgeous to see everything lit up. The harbor bridge in particular, there were a ton of sea gulls flying above it. I did walk across it before, very short.

Got back and met up with the girls, got dressed and had dinner then went out. It was fun, but at 12 I wanted to go because we planned to get up at 6 and catch the train to Blue Mountains National Park, a world heritage site. So...pretty much I wimped out at 12:30 (I'm such an old fogey, I can't stay up past 12 anymore very easily. If everything went according to plan, I'd go to sleep everyday at 10). We got up at 7 and caught the train at 8, arrived at Kotoomba (the tourist town in the park) and found our hostel The Flying Fox. The guy is soooo nice, he told us the best shortish but strenuousish hike around Echo Point. It took us about 4 hrs to do, and my god the giant staircase from hell did a number of my legs. Uphill wasn't so bad, but going downhill was a little rough on my knees. It was absolutely gorgeous, saw some really interesting birds, admired the waterfalls (much to cold to do anything in it)...but I definitely kept my distance from touching EVERYTHING. You never know when an innocuous plant such as a fern might actually be insanely lethal. I did touch a pretty flower, thought better, and didn't move the hand near my mouth or eyes until I could wash my hands. There are 18 native species of tomato plants in Australia and 16 are very deadly...like eat it and die within seconds. So I hear from Caitlin. After all the pretty views, we caught a trolley back to town and asked the bus driver the location of a good thai restaurant. The driver drove us personally to the next town and dropped us off on the front steps of the restaurant, showed us the bottle'o, and repeatedly asked us how we enjoyed Australia. And the thai food...AMAZING. Been craving it for sooo long.

Tomorrow we're going rockclimbing and abseiling. I was planning on going to a cave but rock climbing seems sooo cool, I've always really wanted to do it.

Anna finally called me and so I'll go to Melbourne at the end of the program for a week or so. She says I can get cheeeap massages which would be nice. Then we're going to Uluru (aka Ayer's Rock) together! It's so cold up here, it's like Tahoe. It started raining and I just hopped around trying to get warm.

Anyway, I'm completely exhausted (little sleep the night before + busy day), but I'm soooo excited about tomorrow. After that we're going back to Sydney, probably go to a pub with music, then Monday we're going to a beach. Lyndsay's going to surf, and I'm tempted because surfboards are $15 to rent/day...so we'll see. Really, I want to boogieboard.

Sydney here I come!

2005-08-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

I got a ticket to Sydney because we have a four day weekend and I'm leaving today right after lectures. I'm excited, though I honestly have no idea what I'm going to end up doing. I think I'm going to book a tour of the blue mtns, maybe do a bit of camping, a bit of hiking...and definitely going to the aquarium. Funny how so many people have issues against going to a zoo and not an aquarium...fish and funky inverts need their space too.

My favorite drink here is the flat white. The difference between it and a latte? No clue. But it's on the cheaper end of drinks. It's also not very sweet, which is good because now I cannot for the life of me take sugar in my coffee.

Yesterday after lecture I decided to see downtown and walk along the main street (Queen Street). Ugh, a city's a city. Just a giant mall and since I was forced to go along with 8 other people, we got nothing accomplished. Exasperated, I just went home. As soon as I walked through the door, I checked my cell phone and found a message from Caitlin. She's here for quite a while but I was in Moreton Bay, then she booked a tour for the two days I was actually here, then I leave for Sydney, then she leaves for Sydney the same day I come back from Sydney. In a nutshell...pretty impossible to see her. Turns out her tour was cancelled and wanted to meet up last night. I ran up to my host mother and told her I wasn't having dinner, then ran to the same bus I had just gotten off. After arriving BACK at queen street mall, I gradually found my way to her hostel, and we had dinner and had fun talking for 3 hrs. But damn, I got home at around midnight and had to wake up at 6:30am. Painful...oh so painful. I really wanted to call someone from the states, but I was much too tired last night and I highly doubted that any one of my lazy ;P friends would be awake at 7am (time difference is add 7 hrs and subtract a day). Then I got up this morning with the intention of calling, and it would've been a lot cheaper to call from my host family's landline, but the teenage girl is on the phone. It's just so difficult to try to call because of the time difference. The only extended period of free time I have is at night, when it's an ungodly hour in the states. I think I'll just have to suck it up and call from a payphone, though it's going to cost me a good 17cents per minute.

Random tidbit: Two of the top ten nerdiest moments of my life happened at Moreton Bay. It was Max's birthday last week and so they converted the lecture/lab room into a dance floor. On the computer (which subsequently projected on a white screen) they did the whole funky morphing color/shapes on windows media player, the music blaring, and the lights for the microscope pointing towards the ceiling for ambiance. Hysterical. I also mentioned Max and Thomas rapping for us. Guess what they rapped about...bioturbation, redox layers, venomous organisms, statistical methods...oh god I could barely stay standing.

I feel so bad, I've barely met my host family. Next weekend though I'm definitely sticking around to see Brisbane. That and I have a research paper due/midterms coming up. But I think I'm going to try to go diving...it's only a day trip.

Last day of MBRS

2005-08-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

Last night was fun, it's the first time I've ever stayed up past 11 since I've arrived in the southern hemisphere. It was Ruth's birthday so we went to the Little Ship's Club (the cheapest pub around). I think she had a great time, she was lifted in her chair. I was not feeling it, especially 'cuz it was the third time this week I had gone out...but we all ended up on the edge of the bluff overlooking the ocean just chatting. Max and Thomas spent a good 30 min rapping...oh so painful ;)

I hate getting caught in religious conversations. Conrad is thinking about becoming a pastor and all that stuff, and somehow in my buzzed state I accidentally steered the conversation to why some people become religious and others don't. It's not that I really hate to think about it, it's just that religion is a core issue that becomes very defensive, whereas it's a light subject for me.

Mike, the taiwanese engineer, is teaching me some chinese! All those damn intonations though. I understand how to dissect what I'm saying, but I still mess up quite a bit. I guess the main motivation is that both Yasmin (indian) and red-haired Lyndsay (the one NOT from auckland) know chinese better than me. And I understood a little bit of what they were saying, so I got all interested.

2005-08-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

So it's raining. Yup, my brain is on warm weather where I run around in flip flops, bathing suit, tank tops, and shorts...but instead I'm huddled in a small ball trying to dry out my shoes and booties (of scuba context) in the thin veil of sun we get every few hours. I didn't even bring any winter clothes except for a fleece jacket. I think I'm beginning to smell a bit ripe, but everyone is too polite to say anything. Not only that, but I have to wear shorts all the time because we're wading through intertidal zones...so it is very cold.

Everyone's been divided into research project, and my group is working on a research project looking at what soldier crabs eat. We're observing the differences in chlorophyll and organic carbon material between the sifted sediment they've eaten and the surrounding sediment. Soldier crabs (Mictyris longicarpus) are pretty cool, their bodies are round and sky blue with these pretty little straw-colored legs with black balls at the joints. They remind me of the bubble crabs from blue planet where they put sediment in their mouths and create a round pellet of sieved sediment. We collected the sediment they sieved and the surrounding sediment, and so far we found no significant results. Suxors. Not that it matters, I didn't have great faith that what we collected was actually sieved sediment, I kind of think half of it was just crap their dug up when they were burrowing.

My group is okay. Ann is smart but we tend to butt heads on ideas, Lindsay (different from the girl I ran into in Auckland) is really cool because she's super efficient, and Roselyn is kind of useless. She just sort of sits around begging for scraps of tasks to do which is good in the sense that she's eager, but she has no initiative and I don't like the idea that I have to tell her what to do.

I feel so bad for this group that decided to take surveys of fish. I mean, they see cool stuff, but they're out there for 8 hrs a day netting fish in the cold cold water with the rain, in wet suits, wading in nipple-deep water with the threat of venomous fish. I guess their biggest worries should be stepping on stonefish and stingrays. Ruth, our TA, used to teach scuba diving and once while she was diving, she stuck her elbow on a "rock" which turned out to be a stonefish, and she felt this incredible pain that made her want to die, and then she doesn't remember anything else. Can you imagine how scary that is? Emergency ascent with a blacked out buddy! Crazy.

MBRS II

2005-08-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we got up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am and went out to the mudflats in front of the research station to check out the wildlife. The cutest things we saw out there were these baby puffers that were zipping around in only 6" of water like mad, and ran into a couple of the guys' feet (yes, they were wearing booties, so no fearsome venom risk). Well, that stopped the puffers cold and one of them actually puffed! Sooooo cute, it was all bloated and floating upside down with its tiny little pectoral fins frantically waving. Kind of felt bad but really, the dumb fish swam straight into their feet.

Then last night we did a netting and caught a estuarine stingray (huge! wingspan of 2.5ft), tons of fortesque (venomous fish that Prof. Ian said feels like your bones turning into molten lava), whiteys, silversides, silverbellies, rabbit fish (also venomous), stars and stripes puffer, leatherjacks, trumpeters (which make grunting noises), and dumpling squids. No stonefish though, I was kind of disappointed.

Well, if anyone wants to call internationally, my mobile number is 0434 923 669. It's expensive as hell for me to call out, but it's completely free to have other people call me. I honestly wouldn't recommend calling me randomly, I usually leave my phone off and usually I'm running around all day until I fall dead asleep, then wake up at the butt crack of dawn.

Moreton Bay Research Station I

2005-08-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

So, I found out why they call british pome (pronounced pawmee). P.O.M.E. = prisoners of mother england.

Anyway, I'm absolutely adoring this program. The subjects, the field trips, the professors, the students...everything is absolutely awesome. We get to go the Lamington, Heron Island, Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, and someplace in the outback. And we get to come back to Moreton to do terrestrial stuff with our other professor Mike Pole. The one major fault is that they don't really tell us anything, even very important things. When I arrived at the airport, the driver told me I was going to a different homestay than originally scheduled. I thought, sure, whatever, that's fine. I arrive at this beautiful house and meet this Malaysian Indian family who gave me curry =D. The only thing was, Jaya, the father, told me that my family would be coming to pick me up at 5pm. Then I think, well, then who are you? Turns out I was only staying over there until the original host family I was assigned to came back from the gold coast from a quilting convention. I think it would've been nice if they had told me, save me the embarassment.

Oh! I did hang out with Liz and Sabrina Saturday night, and met quite a few other Californians studying abroad in New Zealand. Good night, but I made it back to the hostel at 2am and had to get up at 6am to catch my flight. That was painful. But now I want to go back to New Zealand, especially the south island, and backpack through glowworm caves!

Monday we finally all met at the University of Queensland and got our standard orientation. Then they took us to the Royal Exchange, a lovely hotel/restaurant/bar where I tried VB (victoria bitter) and 4X (XXXX). I saw white cockatoos with a yellow crest at the park by my homestay house! And some odd black birds with a blue breast. I also saw some wild turkeys and ibises at the uni.

So this morning (Wed) I woke up at 5:30am to catch the bus to the uni for our field trip to North Stradbroke Island. On the ferry over (btw, we drove a bus onto the ferry which then subsequently carried us across the bay), we saw bottlenose dolphins and a huge group of these rather large blue jellies (roughly 1ft), the ones with a fat dome top and very compact floofy tentacles. We went over to the side of the island facing the bay and the energy of the waves were just insane! We stopped at a beach where I saw a couple cockoburros and the remains of one of those crabs that make little balls of sand around their burrow. Then we stopped on the side of the island facing the ocean and it was so beautifully calm, I really really wanted to go diving and/or snorkeling, just to see the stonefish and all those other lovely venomous creatures. Tonight is a lecture on venomous and dangerous creatures of Australia =D =D =D!!!

I felt like I had so much to say but now that I finally have internet, I can't think of much. I've got a ton of pictures but I definitely have absolutely no time to upload them or anything. Maybe when I get back to my homestay, and when I stay up past 9pm, I can set something up. Tomorrow we're getting up and mucking about in the mudflats at around 6am so that should be a ton of fun.

Our research station is very posh (compared to Puerto Rico and that horrible hotel in Mexico).

Oh! I have a cell phone! I can receive phone calls for free, but actual calling is so expensive. I'll probably end up mostly using SMS (aka text messages). I'll pass out the number later (not that I expect anyone to call me, but just in case).

Orientation

2005-08-22T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sitting here in the University of Queensland being taught how to use the library. I'm trying hard to refrain from banging my head on the table repeatedly.

My homestay seems like a very nice family, originally South African. I haven't had a lot of time to meet them because I keep coming home late and falling asleep soon after, then waking up early to catch the bus to the uni. I get my own room which is nice, downstairs, and they have a very adorable and loveable cat named Polly. They also have a dog who is very hyper, and apparently I can't let him out at night because he'll eat cane toads in the backyard. Cane toads are introduced from Southeast Asia with poison glands on their backs, wrecking havoc on the local ecosystem (for the obvious reason).

I don't have much time to write, I have to run to the stores before they close. I guess I'm just writing to say that I'm still alive and have limited internet access.

I'm leaving for Moreton Bay Research Station tomorrow for the next week which will be fun. Our professors (Ian Tibbett and Mike Pole) are both non-Aussies. The former is a pom (british) and the latter is a kiwi (nz), and Ian is such a funny man.

2005-08-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Rrrr...stupid internet. I always forget they try to make people sign up for crap they don't have to. No worries about commenting, just send an email or something.

Yesterday I completely crashed at 9pm, totally and utterly exhausted. Of course, that meant I was wide awake at 6am which the person below me absolutely hated. Ah well. So today I decided to go to Waiheke Island by myself (Lindsey left for Australia today) and it's a big tourist island. It's got vineyards, suburbs, boutique shops, local landscape hippy-ish art, kayak rentals, bike rentals, etc. I decided to go anyway because nothing else in Auckland really motivated me, or at least would take up a whole day.

It surprises me how everything is such a rush decision. As soon as I landed on the island, I picked up a brochure, and inquired the visitor center about a good place to visit. The woman said, "Here's a brochure, a map, a bus schedule, and run for the bus because it's about to leave." As it turns out, I hopped on to a bus heading towards Onetangi beach. The island is absolutely gorgeous, subtropical flora. I walked along The Strand and though I've never been a person to pick up shells (I always feel like I'm stripping the natural environment, stealing homes from hermit crabs, and robbing the beach of future sand), I ended up with 5 shells in my pocket. I also ran into a 9 armed seastar (weird). The intertidal pools are a bit different here. Clam shells embed all the rocks, the hermit crabs are awfully pretty (green with white spots), the seagulls are a little more decorative (bright orange legs and beak, and the tail feathers are black with white polka dots), small chitons and limpets, and very small mussels.

I've figured out there's at least four types of people living on Waiheke Island. The absurdly rich, white-picket fence families, hippies, the old timers who've been here since the early 1970s, and possibly gays. I'm not so sure about that, but I ran into this old man who was telling me the island is full of "alternative lifestyles" and I thought it meant new age, but I did notice a few woman couples holding hands.

I also went to Oneroa (very boring, very small island town for tourist) and ate fish and kumara chips (sweet potato). I figured it was a good meal to kind of signify that kiwi's are actually british with a bit of polynesian pride. Then I tried to go to Rocky Bay, and on the map it showed a short walk to Whakanewha Regional Park. When I asked the bus driver which direction I should go, he raised an eyebrow. He stopped the bus and said, "Look at this sign. This is the sign you have to be at when you want the bus to pick you up. Now, there's no one left on the bus, and this is my last stop, so I'll drive you to the park. Pay attention to what you have to walk to get there, and tell me to turn around if you think it's too long."

Well...it was a ridiculous walk, especially for as late as I started it. Too bad, the park did look lovely. The bus driver felt bad for me and, with what I'm assuming is typical kiwi pride for their lovely land, decided to take me on a private tour. We stopped at a peak where the ridiculously rich lived, owning 30 acres of land each and a beautiful house with a billion windows. He showed me the New Zealand Christmas Tree, huge gnarly looking trees, which blooms in Jan-Feb with these huge red flowers. Then we drove down the hill and he dropped me off on a bench that overlooked the harbor while he went to the bottom of the hill, turned around, and picked me up again. He let me run around in a local artist's studio for a few minutes, then let me look at wild roosters at the entrance of the sports park. Finally he showed me a grove of trees which supposedly, after a half hour walk, spits you out on a beach where you can collect a huge jar of oysters in 10 minutes. He also showed me another island that some really rich family has owned for five generations, and told me that there are 8 kids on the island who get their own private ferry and bus to the Waiheke school. He finally dropped me off at a bus stop taking me back to the ferry station. I didn't even catch his name =(.

Then at the bus stop I met an old timer who had been living on the island for 35 years, and he was getting wasted. I mean, old man with no teeth and teetering on a cane taking the bus around the island from pub to pub to pub. Then another old man came by and they started talking, and they had the same exact life. Moved to Waiheke in '70 and bought a house on the beach for $4000. Then moved to Auckland for a few years, hated it, and came back to Waiheke. They knew the same people, who lived where, and complained about how everyone they know is dead. Yup.

Well, Brisbane bright and early tomorrow! Gots to go since this is an internet cafe.

Auckland

2005-08-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hey people!

So I left San Francisco last night and took a red eye. The ultimate destination is Brisbane but I decided to layover in Auckland for a couple days just because I could (what can I say, I'm a travel whore). I have to say the flight, though 13 hrs, was pretty painless thanks to Justine and her extremely generous donation of sleeping pills which made me comatose for 10 of those hours.

I decided to blog entries because I don't have my laptop with me anymore (heavy, annoying, loud) and this is the easiest thing I can think of. Sorry, I know, extra effort, but at least I won't destroy your email accounts =D. As for pictures, I'm not sure. I might do snapfish or something (or if anyone has any suggestions about a good place I'm all for it).

This morning I checked into my hostel and ran down to the ferry to go to Rangitoto, an island just a few miles offshore. It's a young volcanic island and I thought, well, it's somewhere to start. I was walking down the street and I saw this girl out of the corner of my eye who looked vaguely familiar, but she was dashing off so fast I dismissed it. I buy my ticket, sit down, and the same girl walks through the gate in front of me wearing a UCSB sweatshirt. I start making odd noises and wildly waving because I know her! It's Lindsey, Sabrina and Vida's friend (met in one of my classes). Crazy huh? She's visiting her friend Liz (also was in EEMB 120, though we don't recognize each other) at the University of Auckland and she is also on the Brisbane program! So we hiked through creepy lava caves and up the Rangitoto summit together, met Liz at the University, went through the winter gardens in the Domain, checked out the Maori exhibit at the Museum (amaaazing, beautiful), and are now sitting utterly exhausted in front of free internet access. I'm going out tonight and trying NZ beers, which I hear are just awesome. And Sabrina's coming in tomorrow night! Crazy. Just....crazy.

The only way I can describe Auckland is quaint. When I first arrived, it reminded me strongly of Seattle but then I went hiking on a young volcanic island with fields of jagged pumice, crawled through lava tubes (which I only did because Lindsey assured me there are no snakes or poisonous spiders in all of NZ, and we had a group behind us who said they would eventually go through and if we were in trouble, they'd find us), and stood above a crater.

Anyway, I should go because I'm hogging a computer I have no right to...and I wouldn't mind taking a break. I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow but I'm sure I can find something to occupy myself. Oh, and it's 4:27pm Aug 19th.